I covered my mouth.
Julian leaned over the page.
“Dad wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“He gave me a file shortly before he died.”
I looked at her.
“Why haven’t you contacted me?”
Shame passed across her face.
“Because after Tom died, I got scared.”
There was no dramatic excuse in her voice.
Only the uncomfortable truth.
“I had two children. A mortgage. A job I couldn’t afford to lose. I convinced myself that the discrepancies were incompetence rather than fraud.”
Maya’s father asked quietly, “And now?”
“Now a child’s wheelchair nearly collapsed.”
Nobody answered that.
Rebecca looked toward Julian.
“And yesterday, my brother called me about a thirteen-year-old boy selling a valuable guitar.”
Julian looked confused.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He said you refused his first offer.”
I turned to my son.
“What?”
Julian looked guilty.
“He offered more than I needed.”
